My Philosophical Commitments

Education is not preparation for life.  Education is life itself. – John Dewey 

1)  The basic occupation of all human beings is to become more human.  That is how Paulo Freire encapsulated humanization.  By “occupation”, I have in mind the meaning that occupational therapists ascribe to that term: the everyday things that occupy our time and give our lives meaning, including the things we want, need, and are expected to do.  For many adults, that does include jobs.  However, it also includes hobbies, leisure activities, relationships, and all sorts of other things we can do with our time (with our “one and precious life” as Anne Lamott says).  For children, their primary occupation is clear: play.  To prevent any person pursuing their basic occupation is, by definition, dehumanizing.  

2)  Teaching catalyzes learning.  The legacy of behaviorism has bequeathed educators a tacit assumption that teaching causes learning.  But this is clearly not the case.  People learn without (intentional) teachers all the time.  And teachers labor without their students gaining knowledge frequently as well.  Teaching does not cause learning, but it can open the possibility for learning.  Similarly, catalysts do not cause reactions to happen.  They are commonly said to make reactions happen more quickly.  And that is true.  But the way they accomplish this is by lowering barriers - usually by supporting transition states.  Teaching is not what causes learning, but it can lower barriers to learning.

3)  You learn to walk by walking.  I have heard the same sentiment expressed many ways.  My dear friend Georgia Johnson was fond of saying that you can’t get good at swimming, skiing, or sex by just reading or talking about them.  “You have to just jump in and do it.”  (She took particular delight in following-up with “I don’t ski, so my job is to teach you to ssssssswim.”)  Mary Daly said it, perhaps, more elegantly: you get courage by courage-ing. And my colleague Mel Fierstine captures it most concisely:  becoming is being.  One way or another there is timeless wisdom in the recognition that learning about something is not the same as learning to be the kind of person who does that thing.  But I favor the learning to walk by walking metaphor, because it has clear entailments for the responsibilities of teachers.  A teacher’s responsibility is not to prevent people stumbling or falling down - because that would also prevent them learning to walk.  Instead, teachers need to find soft landing sites, so that when learners fall down, they are not harmed.  Experience is a brutal teacher when stakes are high.

4)  Identity is more noun than verb.  It is not something we have.  It is something we do.  We become a friend by doing the kinds of things friends do.  We become a teacher by doing the kinds of things teachers do.  We become a maker by doing the kinds of things makers do.  Identity is a story we tell about ourselves through our actions - a story we tell to ourselves and to others.  But we are not the sole authors of our own stories.  We need other people to accept them (I can act like a teacher all I want, but if everyone refuses to learn from me, I cannot be a teacher).  Identity is a complex process of coauthorship - and it is a lifelong endeavor.  Teachers play crucial roles in restricting or opening up the kinds of identities students in their classrooms can author for themselves. 

5)  You cannot author identities you cannot see for yourself.  To do the hard work of learning a thing, I first have to see myself as the kind of person who could do that thing.  This is both an issue of exposure and of representation.  If I am unaware that herpetologist is a kind of person that exists, I cannot begin to imagine myself as a herpetologist.  But even if I know what herpetology is, if my image of a herpetologist is an identity in which I cannot see my self (i.e., if herpetologists don’t look like me), then I cannot strive to do the kinds of things a herpetologist does.  Only when herpetologist becomes a thinkable identity can I start doing the hard work of learning to do the things herpetologist do.  If we want students to do the hard work of learning, we need to find ways to make diverse identities thinkable.

 6)  Wonder is our birthright.  It is one of very few things all human beings have in common: that we wonder.  What we wonder about is what makes us unique.  Wonder can range from curiosity to awe, depending on how strong the emotional pull is.  And because emotion is involved, it tends to draw us in: every wonderment explored leads to new questions for exploration and so on.  Wonder is it own motivation - and central to the occupation of becoming more human.  One of the most common ways people cede their humanity is to stop wondering.

7)  Empowerment is not something we can do for students, but it should be the goal.  To say “I want to empower my students” is to set myself up as the source of their power.  That is false generosity because all it can really accomplish is to make students dependent on me.  Instead, if I am interested in my students’ empowerment, my work is to open space for them to find and claim agency.

The opening quote, by Dewey, is both [opportunity] and warning for educators.  The work we do catalyzes learning for the people we educate.  We can open possibilities for learners to discover previously unthinkable selves, to “try-on” diverse identities and occupations, and to claim agency to shape their own place in the world - to become more fully human.  Or we can indoctrinate them into willing compliance with a kind of not seeing and not knowing that occupies their lives with someone else’s interests.